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Here's Anandtech's review of the X2.

If you are worried about price you should probably be using a price engine like this one:
http://labs.anandtech.com/search.php
Of course, since so many components are integrated into the core logic of the motherboards, you're going to be hard pressed to find too many bare bones platforms. You can usually find motherboards with SATA and sound, but NICs are pretty much always integrated into motherboards these days. Integrated Graphics fell out of style a few years ago, and the few Intel and ATI motherboards that still like to use IGP also have non-IGP alternatives.

But it would be premature to say that they won the dual-core war. Anandtech has an interesting article
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2252
that mentions future dual-core versions of the Pentium M. That should at least take care of the heat problems that dual-core Prescotts have. Once these chips are out, they might be much more serious competition than Intel's current offerings.

You obviously haven't done your research.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397&p=3

Compare:
2x Opteron 248 (@2.2GHz) => $910
1x Opteron 175 (@2.2GHz, dual core) => $999

AMD's margins on their dual core Opteron parts are huge. On average, the second core costs customers over 3x as much as the first core for any of these CPUs. As you will soon see, the performance benefits are definitely worth it, but know that AMD's pricing is not exactly designed to drive dual core into widespread adoption.

And here are the prices for A64 dual cores..
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397&p=4

Try this article instead. Much more information, and of a useful nature at that.

Try this article instead. Much more information, and of a useful nature at that.

The best comparison of the dual core reviews I've read is over at the great anandtech site.

AMD's push with dual core into the server markets half a year before Intel's dual core Xeon arrives is going to tempt a lot of IT departments out there.

On the desktop side, we are extremely excited about the Athlon 64 X2. The 4400+ that we compared here today had no problem competing with and outperforming Intel's fastest dual core CPUs in most cases

The real problem is that AMD has nothing cheaper than $530 that is available in dual core, and this is where Intel wins out. With dual core Pentium D CPUs starting at $241, Intel will be able to bring extremely solid multitasking performance to much lower price points than AMD will. And from what we've seen, it looks like that price advantage will continue for quite some time. It all boils down to economics, and in the sense of manufacturing capacity, Intel has AMD beat - thus allowing for much more aggressively priced volume dual core solutions.

Conclusion: AMD have better chips. But they don't have the manufacturing capacity to bring them out in volume. So they focus on their higher margin chips. Meanwhile Intel keeps from losing face by selling at the volume, lower-priced end of the market. At least until AMD get some new fab plants up and running.

--
VPS Hosting on Dual Xeon Hardware - but just for the time being :)

Actually, as a DVD player (using Apple's DVD Player software), the iMac sucks ass. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but the scaler and de-interlacer are horrible. Since the iMac's native resolutions are 1440x900 and 1680x1050, scaler performance is very important.

Here's Anand's take on Apple's DVD player:

The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 5
The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 6
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review: Page 14

Actually, as a DVD player (using Apple's DVD Player software), the iMac sucks ass. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but the scaler and de-interlacer are horrible. Since the iMac's native resolutions are 1440x900 and 1680x1050, scaler performance is very important.

Here's Anand's take on Apple's DVD player:

The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 5
The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 6
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review: Page 14

Actually, as a DVD player (using Apple's DVD Player software), the iMac sucks ass. I'm sure this will be fixed in the future, but the scaler and de-interlacer are horrible. Since the iMac's native resolutions are 1440x900 and 1680x1050, scaler performance is very important.

Here's Anand's take on Apple's DVD player:

The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 5
The Mac mini as a Media Computer: Page 6
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Review: Page 14

For $1500 I can get a great laptop, then use the $900 for a vacation package to Hawaii. I'm quite amazed what people will blow their money on, looking at quality surverys for cars. You'd think the higher priced cars are the ones with better quality. Its quite funny to see Jaguar, Land rover, and porsche at the bottom of list below hyundia and Daewo. I guess if you need to burn you money, go right ahead. You can buy your 20" Apple LCD monitor which has less quality than the dell 20" while the dell is less than half the price. Review.

2a) The 350z's MSRP is $27,000. With rebates and incentives, they can be had for little more than $20,000.

2b) You seem woefully misinformed. The number of current, multi-threaded PC games can be counted on one hand.

2c) You completely missed the point of the comparison, which was that the AGP 6800GT is ~$300, while the PCIe variant is ~$400, and the ATi X800XL, which is virtually identical performance-wise, is $300 in PCIe.

2d) The poster didn't claim it was, and it's a real card you fucking smacktard.

2e) The fact that you've purchased an SLI setup alone shows that you don't have a fucking clue what's going on with gaming hardware, and are swayed more by hype than real-world performance. Double your performance... what bullshit. If you get even another 40% with a second card you'd be lucky, and then you're a generation of features behind.

Anand, the PC guru who has been extremely positive toward Apple products since becoming a dual-user, beta-tested Tiger throughout its development.

This week his lengthy review praises features, but finds the release version to be buggy and rushed. Performance is also a mixed bag. http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2404&p=1

Two quotes:

"But I have to find it difficult recommending a product that's clearly unfinished, and clearly not without bugs. None of the bugs that I encountered were show stoppers, but I'm not one to support pre-release products that are being shipped as final. So if you're expecting a perfect user experience with Tiger, you'll be close but not quite there. I'm hoping the 10.4.1 update fixes all of my issues, but for now don't expect a flawless $129 experience. "

...

"Looking at today, it's an important day for Apple, a day to celebrate a very impressive OS launch - but I get the feeling that no one at Apple is celebrating quite yet, it seems like there's still quite a bit of work left."

64-bit AMD Opteron workstations were available two months before the G5 Powermacs were announced. If you call the G5 Powermacs "workstations" (dual processor, PCI-X), then AMD was first. If you call G5's "desktops" (no EEC memory, no workstation-class graphics cards), then PPC was first (before the Athlon 64 three months later).

2. I want a quiet system, and that means no fans. A high-end graphics board that sucks energy and produces heat is not just a neutral "I don't need it", it's a negative "I don't WANT it".

C'mon. A new high-end computer should have PCI Express. The Radeon 9600 is last generation's mid-range graphics. It is outperformed by this generation's low-end (GeForce 6200 and Radeon X700). Only the ultra high end cards need loud fans.

The prices of PCI Express versions of the X800 have been dropping rapidly. This doesn't happen unless the supply is healthy. Why the heck hasn't Apple moved to PCI Express?

Let remind you that no one has really moved their processor performance much in the last two years, until just recently with dual core designs.

I agree. However, for laughs, let me remind you that it has been 22 months since Jobs's boast: "3GHz within a year." IBM never stood behind that claim, but Jobs sure got people excited.

As to size, I have one and its just fine by me. It sits on the floor, it could be four feet tall for all I care.

This argument sounds stupid whenever PC defenders use it against iMac proponents. Most Mac users proudly display their beautifully designed Macs on the desk. Putting it on the floor is a travesty, isn't it? I think the size is fine, but some people expect a box that size to have at least a second 5.25" drive bay and more PCI slots. I think the dual processors might have something to do with it.

So, one external drive bay, with an optical drive that supports reading and writing just about every format under the sun.

A second drive bay would be a nice place to put a Blu-Ray drive next year. Also, many pros want an extra 5.25 drive bay for extra studio-quality audio/video I/O.

And what would most people use more slots for? Nothing. So much is included on the motherboard these days that six slots really doesn't make sense for the vast majority. If you need more, you'll probably get a PCI expansion chasis and stop whinning.

"Most people" is not what matters here. The Powermac is the only solution for pros and many pros will want more than three PCI slots over a five-year Mac lifetime. Five years ago, the Powermac didn't have gigabit ethernet, USB 2.0, FireWire 800, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth, decent surround sound audio, or digital audio I/O. Sure, these can be added in an external mess, but most pros would want those extra PCI slots.

True for Intel, not so for AMD.

So no, the PPC970 hasn't received dual core yet, but claiming that IBM 'can't keep up' from a technological standpoint is absolutely ridiculous, and suggests that you don't really know what you're talking about.

Granted, IBM knows what it's doing. It should make a dual core annoucement soon for the PPC970 (if it has such plans) soon though, just for bragging rights.

Quad-core Power Macs would be sweet, especially at the same price point! =)

True for Intel, not so for AMD.

So no, the PPC970 hasn't received dual core yet, but claiming that IBM 'can't keep up' from a technological standpoint is absolutely ridiculous, and suggests that you don't really know what you're talking about.

Granted, IBM knows what it's doing. It should make a dual core annoucement soon for the PPC970 (if it has such plans) soon though, just for bragging rights.

Quad-core Power Macs would be sweet, especially at the same price point! =)

I really like the andantech's review of the mac OS from A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective

personally a $500 mac is a few hundred dollars to expensive to buy and so I'm just too cheap to even consider a mac. though i think emacs take too long to boot (remember I care for the lowend) but do have some good UI.

I once asked RMS in a conference what he thought about products with a short shelf life value, like games. There are not too many ways to create a profit out of a game if you make it open source.

All the content would obviously not be open sourced, and that's really what you pay for when you purchase a game isn't it?

However, how exactly would, for instance, Epic earn money by open sourcing their Unreal Engine? Sure they could make a few bucks off another Unreal (Tournament) game, basically selling the game content. But lets face it, they're not planning on making big bucks on that.

Tim Sweeney thinks this is the direction the industry is headed: "We also see middleware as one of the major cost-saving directions for the industry as software complexity increases. It's certainly not economical for hundreds of teams to write their own multithreaded game engines and tool sets."

Where should Epic get their R & D money from, in RMS' opinion?

Anandtech too have reviewed the Segate drive. Read carefully because unfortunately enough platter density and NCQ haven't really made this drive as fast as one would imagine.

There's this interview with Tim Sweeney, the leading developer behind the Unreal 3 engine.
They're working on a multithreaded engine for unreal 3, exciting stuff.
Like you said, AI is a logical chunk of processing that should be on a separate thread. Other logical chunks he mentions are physics, animation updates, the renderer's scene traversal loop, sound updates, and content streaming.

So at least one multi-threaded game engine is in the pipe. This is good because we don't really have a chicken and egg problem.

So I agree games will improve a lot with multi-core.

But for other apps I'm not as excited. I don't know what other apps I use regularly could be sped up with a multi-threaded rewrite. Virus scanning? Searching? Media playback? eMule? SETI? Maybe lots of apps can be sped up, but will any of them do it? In the interview I linked Tim says a multi-threaded system takes 2-3 times longer to write and test.
I don't use most of the apps that have a lot to gain from multi-cores (Media creation apps, server apps). Maybe I'll start doing more things at once. Or maybe run a dual-head system. Maybe.
It seems games are the only resource pig apps I've ever really run, so they're the only apps that will prompt me to upgrade to multi-core. Maybe once dual cores are common non-game developers will start to exploit them. And maybe some app will suprise me but I'm not holding my breath.

Until then a single CPU serves my needs fine. Sometimes I come across situations where I close one app to give another a boost. Such as shutting down apps to make the game faster. With a dual core I could probably run everything, but for now I'll settle for shutting extra stuff down.
In the future when playing a multi-threaded game on a multi-core PC I'll probably still shut down extra apps just to squeeze out the extra fps.

After reading the article, I realised that the frontside bus was shared. I didn't expect that. It seems to be a transitory solution in order to have the "first dual-core" CPUs on the market. When AMD releases theirs I expect them to have a superior solution.

For benchmarks relating to serious DB and web use, see this review by Anand Shempi: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397 or these two at FiringSquad: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd_dual-core_ opteron_875/ and http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/colfax_dual_op teron/

Has the new dual core opteron up against a quad Xeon with 8MB cache, amongst many others.

Well worth a read:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

As usual.

Seriously. This is the level of usage that I'm trying to achieve, not UT (World of Warcraft). But I do want to be able to queue up a few torrents, rip and encode my movies (for a media centre setup) and play a game at the same time while running Itunes (Decoding lossless).

Back in the day, and I have posted this before, when I had a friend running an Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron board) he could burn a CD, encode MP3s, host a dedicated UT server and then join it. Dual Cores / Dual CPU setups have always been for us hardcore users and this is a remarkable step forward.

Here is the Anandtech AMD Dual-Core Review (I prefer it slightly to the FiringSquad articles)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397Anandtech

Here is Part I of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2388
Here is Part II of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2389

That should provide some useful information.

Seriously. This is the level of usage that I'm trying to achieve, not UT (World of Warcraft). But I do want to be able to queue up a few torrents, rip and encode my movies (for a media centre setup) and play a game at the same time while running Itunes (Decoding lossless).

Back in the day, and I have posted this before, when I had a friend running an Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron board) he could burn a CD, encode MP3s, host a dedicated UT server and then join it. Dual Cores / Dual CPU setups have always been for us hardcore users and this is a remarkable step forward.

Here is the Anandtech AMD Dual-Core Review (I prefer it slightly to the FiringSquad articles)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397Anandtech

Here is Part I of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2388
Here is Part II of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2389

That should provide some useful information.

Seriously. This is the level of usage that I'm trying to achieve, not UT (World of Warcraft). But I do want to be able to queue up a few torrents, rip and encode my movies (for a media centre setup) and play a game at the same time while running Itunes (Decoding lossless).

Back in the day, and I have posted this before, when I had a friend running an Abit BP6 (Dual Celeron board) he could burn a CD, encode MP3s, host a dedicated UT server and then join it. Dual Cores / Dual CPU setups have always been for us hardcore users and this is a remarkable step forward.

Here is the Anandtech AMD Dual-Core Review (I prefer it slightly to the FiringSquad articles)
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397Anandtech

Here is Part I of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2388
Here is Part II of the Intel Dual Core Article
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2389

That should provide some useful information.

Or, for games and doing all those things in the background that you would rather leave uninterupted (streamripping, news feeds, dvd/mp3 encoding, folding@home), get a dual core. Check this link. There's only a few fps difference when gaming and having more than a few background apps running on a dual core setup.

Look at the Power5 which is a combination of dual core dies integrated in a multichip package. It provides for L3 to L3 sharing as well as ring style interconnect I believe.

Amazingly the following is the best info I could find that isn't private...
IBM's POWER5 Chip with 8 cores and 144MB cache showcased

Not exactly what you are talking about but close... of course the cell processor is closer to what you would likely get on a single die at this time given feature sizes and heat issues.

Anandtech has an AMD dual core Opteron and Athlon64 X2 article that might compliment the original poster's story pretty well. It has a sh*tload of benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

I really wish they wouldn't do gaming benchmarks with an Opteron in stories like these. Just because the Opteron used has similar specs to the dekstop processor that hasn't been released doesn't necessarily mean that the gaming benchmarks are all that useful. Just my 2 cents.

It'll be interesting to see how soon prices fall for these AMD processors (server and desktop) when they go mainstream. Read the cost comparisons for these badboys in the article.

Finally, I'm glad that Anand decided to demonstrate that the new AMDs will be backwards compatible with Socket 939 motherboards WITH BIOS revisions. Intel's dual core processors don't offer that luxury, from what I read in the article.

IronChefMorimoto

Anand even use Windows for the Firefox compile-test!

Not only that, but they run it "single-threaded", which is to say that they didn't run it with -jN for N larger than 1.

Even so the Athlons won easily. If I was a tinfoil-hat man I'd say the reason they didn't run more threads was because the Intels would get too spanked.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx? i=2397

That's because the first VIA chipset for the AMD Athlon (Apollo KX133) didn't ship until about 6 months after the Athlon (and AMD 750 chipset) launch. I'd expect a brand new chipset (with PC133 and AGP 4x) to outperform and have more features than a six-month-old chipset (with PC100 and AGP 2x).

If I remember correctly, AMD has said they are not in the chipset business (for desktops, anyway). They only made the 750 chipset for the platform's launch and expected others (VIA, SiS, ALi) to produce chipsets in volume eventually.

Besides, the grandparent's point was about stability (and probably compatibility). At that time, I wouldn't have trusted VIA chipsets to be stable and compatible with my PCI/ISA cards.

That's because the first VIA chipset for the AMD Athlon (Apollo KX133) didn't ship until about 6 months after the Athlon (and AMD 750 chipset) launch. I'd expect a brand new chipset (with PC133 and AGP 4x) to outperform and have more features than a six-month-old chipset (with PC100 and AGP 2x).

If I remember correctly, AMD has said they are not in the chipset business (for desktops, anyway). They only made the 750 chipset for the platform's launch and expected others (VIA, SiS, ALi) to produce chipsets in volume eventually.

Besides, the grandparent's point was about stability (and probably compatibility). At that time, I wouldn't have trusted VIA chipsets to be stable and compatible with my PCI/ISA cards.

But we are talking about the Dresden Fab 30, which was for a long time considered the most advanced fab in the world.

"In May 2001, Fab 30 was awarded the coveted "Fab of the Year" title by Semiconductor International. The magazine recognized Fab 30 as the first facility in the world specifically designed to produce microprocessors with copper interconnects." http://www.amdboard.com/amdfab30.html

With over 150,000 square feet of clean-room, it could, and does, handle the load.

As a side note, here's AnandTech's tour of Fab 30: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.html? i=1773

Here you go. :-*

I believe that this is the link you meant to post.

(AnandTech: Intel Dual Core Performance Preview Part II: A Deeper Look)

Interestingly enough AnandTech is also out with a round up today. http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393

first, gratuitous link to my site build your own PVR and the byopvr forums.

Anandtech just did a round up of a bunch of windows MCE "certified" hardware encoding tuner cards.

Also HTPCnews did a Review comparing the new ATI 550 theater pro with the venerable wintv pvr150

E.

They reviewed 6 boards, and came to a different conclusion: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2393

-- Andyvan

Then, you'll have to wait till Q1 2006 for the Yonah processor.

AMD plans to charge a bit less than twice the price of an equivalent single-core model for each dual-core chip. This puts the aforementioned 875 (2.2GHz 800 series) at an expected $2649 according to CNET, with prices going down from there as you go down in series and in speed grade.

A point we made in the first article was that Intel's pricing strategy for dual core is extremely aggressive, with the cheapest 2.8GHz Pentium D soon to be introduced at $241.

There's a bunch of interesting information about AMD's dual core offerings over at AnandTech. Very insightful read.

From the article. "If dual core Opterons do indeed have two memory controllers, the pincount of dual core Opterons will go up significantly - it will also make them incompatible with current sockets. AMD is all about maintaining socket compatibility so it is quite possible that they could only leave half of the memory controllers enabled, in order to offer Socket-940 dual core Opterons. AMD isn't being very specific in terms of implementation details, but these are just some of the options."

Intel _makes_ money on it's CPUs while AMD barely, sometimes does.

While you may be correct that Intel's manufacturing is cheaper than AMD's, isn't it the case, however, that Intel can (and does) sell slower, less capable processors at higher prices than AMD? It seems to me I've always been able to look at Pricewatch and see equivalent Intel processors priced higher than AMD processors.

To make my point, I picked a processor at "random," an AMD64 3400+ and looked it up on tomshardware and found this performance comparison. Then I went to pricewatch and found the following prices, AMD64 3400+ = $188, Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz: $200. I looked up AMD processors and the first article I read said:

... the Athlon 64, while not priced as aggressively as AMD's chips in the past, ends up offering better performance than the Pentium 4, for less money. What more could you want?

Obviously some people want it to say Intel at any cost.

For Baltimore County police, said spokesman Bill Toohey, "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."

Whether this story is true, I don't know, but assuming it is true, what on earth does this have to do with terrorism?

For those that haven't seen it, Anand Lal Shimpi tried the Mac Mini as an HTPC and wrote an article about it: The Mac mini as a Media Computer. (16 Feb 2005)

My summary of the article: The Mini is very nice for importing HD video via FireWire and HD video editing with iMovie HD. However, HD playback is unacceptable with current OS X software and DVD image quality (using Apple's DVD decoder) is not up to par. The Mini has potential as an SD DVR, but DVR software with "media-centric interface" is currently lacking for OS X.

The criticism is directed at the AnandTech preview, for the most part, because it did not contain any gaming benchmarks. The guy is a fool; the first page of Anand's article points out the rationale behind the benchmarking scheme used.

Think about this rationally for a minute: do you honestly believe it is possible for a 3.2GHz dual-core processor to outperform a 3.8GHz single-core processor in a single threaded benchmark? Me either; it's impossible! But that's exactly what you're doing when you make a performance comparison of the two processors using a benchmarking suite consisting entirely of games. Review sites that make this kind of comparison and draw the conclusion that dual-core is a waste of time have _completely_ missed the point; this is NOT what dual-core processors bring to the table.

The introduction of dual-core to the mainstream is not supposed to compete head-to-head with the best and fastest in GAMES. I mean, who gives a fuck about games? Really! Are gamers the only market out there for PCs? I highly doubt it. The sad fact is, according to most review sites on the 'net, PC performance equates to game performance. The introduction of some very exciting technology (essentially the SMP system I've always dreamed of owning on a single piece of silicon) is met with luke-warm response by the mainstream review sites because it doesn't smoke an FX55 in Half-Life 2...

AnandTech published an article that focused on the multitasking performance of dual-core systems, because... wait for it, people... multitasking performance is what multi-processor systems are designed for. The preview was not bought by Intel or any such bullshit; it wasn't designed to paint the new dual-core processor in the best possible light. The author, unlike the rest of the mainstream review sites it seems, realized, in advance, that the benefit of running a dual-core system lies in the silky-smooth multitasking performance it offers. Anand requested input from the community in an attempt to gauge what the average user's multitasking workload looks like, and put together a suite of benchmarks based on the feedback received from real users. It amazes me that the only article published to date to show me -- in real world terms -- the kind of performance benefit I can expect to achieve from a dual-core system and, more importantly, where that benefit is to be realized, is met with such harsh criticism. It disgusts me that the Inquirer would publish an article that clearly attacks the journalistic integrity of another site, without first doing the research to back up their claims; just two minutes researching the article and the community input used to produce it would have negated any evidence of a buy-out by Intel.

So my question is: who's journalistic integrity is jeopardised now?

(why don't I have an account? Well, I don't post here often enough to bother with one... I hate this fucking site. Eat me.)

The first thing I though of when I heard about physics processing units was that you might be able to make a realistic pinball simulation on the pc.

The 3d effects and models have been around for a while, but what makes most computerized pinball games lame to me is their arbitrary and clunky "feel" when the ball interacts with the environment.

Physics processing units might add that extra kick of realism and make it easier to stomach the dwindling population of real pinball machines. Lot of room for force feedback pinbabll controllers here.

-dameron

I find this claim especially scathing because Anandtech is one of the few sites that actually asks readers how they should review various products. Anand asked his readers how they multitasked, and benchmarked with the programs that people told him that they used. They Pentium 4 (dual and single core) did very well in a multitasking situation (I think it would be fair to say it spanked the FX-55), which seemed to piss of a lot of fanboys. http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/default.aspx

But if you're naive about the net and you go online maybe once a month...then you're a raw piece of meat in a pool full of sharks.

I am one of those naive that really don't have a clue what hardware review sites to trust. My comfort is that I am probably far from alone, in this matter.

To assist me and other naives(sp?), please join this silly poll and review the following sites (regarding credibility) with a scale ranging from 1 to 10, where 1 is "No credibility at all" and 10 is "Perfect credibility, these guys wouldn't post a biased review for world domination":

About PC Hardware Reviews
Ace's Hardware
Anandtech
Ars Technica
Beyond 3D
Cnet Reviews
Dan's Data
Dev Hardware
Extremetech
Firingsquad
[H]ard|OCP
Hardware Analysis
Hardwarecentral
Hardwarezone
IT Reviews
OcPrices
Overclockers.com
ProCooling.com
The Tech Report
The Tech Zone
Tom's Hardware
TrustedReviews
Viperlair
Xtreme Resources

If you know only a few of them, give your opinion on those.

Maybe someone with the right facilities could set up an independent poll?